Page 9 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
He holds his breath.
“Your proposal is utter madness,” Amélie says quietly. But then she looks up, and the shimmer of the sunlight on the Grand Canal reflects in her eyes. “And there is no one I would rather be mad with than you.”
Matteo’s heart pounds like a tiger about to be set free from its cage. “Is that a yes?”
“Against my better judgment, it is.” She smiles, and he thinks that there has never been a more beautiful woman in all of history. Not Nefertiti, not Lady Godiva, not even the Mona Lisa.
Matteo shifts forward to kiss her, but the boat wobbles, and Amélie waves him back.
“Sit, sit, you’ll capsize us!” She laughs. “We have forever and a day for kisses. Waiting until we’re on land won’t killus.”
Nevertheless, Matteo rows as quickly as he can back to the boathouse. As soon as their feet touch the dock, he pulls Amélie into his arms and presses his mouth to hers, etiquette be damned. Her hair smells like roses and summer storms, and she closes her eyes and kisses him back, and he knows for certain that her lips, her caress, her love, is what it feels like to be home.
I sigh happilyas I close the notebook, calmer now. The sun is beginning to show, just a little, a pinking of the sky at the horizon to herald the coming light. My thoughts come back to Alaska.
TothisSebastien.
There’s no guarantee the real version of him is anything like my dreamed best friend, my soulmate. It could simply be that their faces match, that it’s a trick of my mind. Maybe I saw someone who looked like him in the past—in one of those black-and-whiteCalvin Klein magazine ads or a waiter-who’s-really-an-actor-waiting-for-his-big-break (they are plentiful in Los Angeles)—and I merged that face into my daydreams.
Here is what I know as fact, though:
His name is Sebastien.
He is captain of the crab boatAlacrity.
And getting out and having new experiences is key in stoking a writer’s creative juices.
“It’s settled, then,” I say aloud, and give myself permission to smile. I’ll go down to the docks under the guise of researching a piece on Ryba Harbor and use that as a way to cross paths with Sebastien. It’s plausible; I used to be a journalist. If he’s there, I’ll approach him more cautiously this time—morenormally—and see if I can engage him that way. If he’s not at the boat, I can still interview people at the port, because hell, king crab fishing is interesting and maybe it’ll make it into my novel. Either way, the time won’t be wasted.
However, that will have to wait until tomorrow. Today is my first full day in Alaska, and I need to run errands. I’d like to take care of them during the few hours the sun is out, since I don’t know where everything is yet in this town, and I definitely don’t have enough confidence in my driving-through-snow capabilities to do it in the dark.
I finish my coffee and send a quick text to my mom and sister to set up a video call for later today since they want to know how I’m settling in here. Then I shower and get dressed, making sure, as always, to put on my dad’s broken watch.
All I have to do is get through today’s humdrum errands, and then tomorrow, I really begin chasing my dreams.
SEBASTIEN
Snowcapped mountains cut through thepurple of the late morning sky like a serrated knife, the lazy sun just peeking over the horizon, as if deciding whether or not to grace us with a few hours of light today. The chill in the briny air bites into my cheeks—the only exposed part of my skin—and I finish up checking the crab traps for rips or any weak spots in the lines.
TheAlacrityisn’t set to leave port until tomorrow, and the crew has already cleaned the ship from bow to stern. But while most of the other men have families to spend time with, this boat is my love. Here in the harbor, in my routine, I’m secure, and the weighty worries from The Frosty Otter feel lighter.
I can figure out what to do about Helene later, because soon I’ll be on the sea again, wearing the cold like a mantle of icy armor. To some, Alaskan winters are bitter and unforgiving, but they’ve been a solace to me. King crab fishing is backbreaking work, but out on the ocean, there’s no time to lament old curses.
When Adam and I bought theAlacrityfive years ago, it was already a wizened veteran of the freezing Alaskan seas. The boatwas iceberg-dented and bitten by rust, half its weight composed of barnacles and war stories of legendary crab hauls and once-in-a-lifetime storms.
The retiring captain had made a fortune; this profession pays exorbitantly well for the danger required to bring in king crabs worth their weight in gold. “If you’re wise,” he said as Adam and I signed the ship’s bill of sale, “you’ll make a pile of money and then you’ll get out of this business. There are only so many years a crab fisherman can live before the ocean claims him. Greed never serves a man well.”
“I’m not afraid of death,” I said.
The captain studied me for a minute, and then said, “Yes, you are. Just not in the same way as most.”
But I try not to think about that conversation and its underlying truth right now. Colin Merculief, Adam’s eighteen-year-old nephew, has just arrived to stock the boat with fresh groceries. As the greenhorn—the newest member of my crew—Colin took care of the Costco run today. His truck bed is loaded with enough to feed our six-man crew for up to ten days. The length of our fishing trip will depend on both the weather and how well our traps do.
“You sure you got enough?” I ask, laughing. Colin has four coolers full of frozen pizzas, burritos, and hot pockets, and who knows how many pounds of bacon, chicken, beef, and cheese. I count two dozen boxes of cereal, ten loaves of bread, a flat of peanut butter and jelly, tubs of protein powder for shakes, and several twenty-pound sacks of potatoes. And that’s only what’s in the bed of the truck. There’s more food inside the cab.
Colin’s cheeks color, which is impressive since they were already pink from the cold. He fumbles in his coat and produces a dog-eared, palm-sized spiral notepad. He holds it out to show me the notes he’s scribbled. “Uncle Adam said we burn ten thousand calories a day when we’re out on the water, so he told me it’s better to overbuy. And he gave me a list of things that are good sources of complex carbohydrates and protein. That’s what I tried to get.”
I laugh again. I’d forgotten what it was like to be so young and eager to learn. “I was just giving you a hard time. You did good, rookie.”
